Monthly Archives: February 2011

Feb26

Phoenix now has another place besides Gangplank for new companies.

Thursday I was in Silicon Valley for Jason Calacanis’ magnificent Launch Conference. I saw the exhibits of fifty companies, and while I didn’t see all of them present, I know there were many good ones. Through efforts like Jason’s, and others like Under the Radar and TechCrunch Disrupt deserve — and get — the opportunity to present to investors and assembled press. The value of this is enormous for two co-founders working in a garage, because they must find money, markets, and talent if they are to grow. In Silicon Valley, that’s all over the place.

Friday I was back in Phoenix. I’ve long been an evangelist for Gangplank, Phoenix’s first, and still premiere, community collaboration space. But on Friday I saw the next big mover in the Phoenix startup scene: AzDisruptors. Modeled after YCombinator, AzDisruptors is adjacent to the offices of Axosoft in North Scottsdale. I’d say it’s about the distance from Palo Alto to San Francisco, but without some of the traffic.

Fortunately, Akira Hirai of Cayenne Consulting made a Flip video of the presentations, because the two companies I saw present at the opening lunch were every bit as good as the ones I had seen the day before.

When you add this new incubator to the companies I have seen at Gangplank (Event Day, Page.ly, Forty, Authority Labs, Betwext, CSI, Big Red Ape, Dev-Fu, DrawBackwards, RynoWeb, CircleMedia, RoughEdge, HeatSyncLabs) and then toss in the 104 proposals I read for the Arizona Innovation Grants, you understand how vibrant the Phoenix startup community actually is.

Now we have to figure out a way to help those startups grow into the businesses we need to grow jobs in the state. Right now, a shortage of both capital and management talent means early stage companies get picked off and moved to California as soon as they get noticed. Silicon Valley VCs think nothing of asking two founders to move to California for money. But if the company had more traction, neither the founders nor the funders would want to move it. So AzDisruptors can start some of these companies off, and places like Gangplank can create a community they want to stay in.

It’s just over the horizon, folks. The stars are aligned: The Arizona Commerce Authority, Gangplank, AzDisruptors, and many other promising initiatives. Just don’t mess it up this time!

Feb19

Never Mind Women’s Rights: How About Children’s Rights to Remain Unborn

Posted on February 19, 2011 by Francine

Never Mind Women’s Rights: How About Children’s Rights to Remain Unborn

Who are you pro-life people kidding? Do you even know what’s out happens in the lives of children whose parents should never have been parents? Do you think every kid that isn’t aborted lives with two preferably Christian parents in a little house on the prairie? How naive and self-centered you are.

I was a foster parent. The birth mom of my foster family (4 childen) had the first child at 16. She was stunned to find out how much responsibility it was, and soon became a drug-addicted welfare mom. Only after her fourth kid got to kindergarten did Child Protective Services finally get involved and realize the kids were starving. By that time, the dad had committed suicide behind a drug deal, and the mom had become a full-fledged crack whore.

One of the few parental responsibilities the mother shouldered was to sign a paper saying she didn’t want her children to have sex education in school. She said she wanted to tell them in her own way.

Well, the oldest got pregnant at 16 just like her mom. She had the child and ran away, ending up in prison. She has had a tough life ever since.

The younger three lived on and off in my home after being removed from the birth mother, who was only concerned about losing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children.

My late husband, who was a physician, consented to become a foster parent only because those kids were stealing from convenience stores to feed themselves while in first grade, and running drugs to make money.

The middle girl also got pregnant at 16, but she was living with me at the time. The boy wanted nothing to do with her or a baby. She didn’t want it either. She begged me for help, and I took her to Planned Parenthood, behind the back of the system. They gave her a lot of education and she chose RU486.

If Planned Parenthood hadn’t existed, she would also have been a mother at 16. The foster care system had no services for people like her; they only had pediatricians.

She is now 25. She has a toddler, another child born to a man in prison. She’s trying very hard to support him with her 8th grade education, but it’s not easy. She probably should have waited a few more years before having a child.

When people ask me if I am pro-life, I always say yes. In my own case, when I got pregnant, I carried the child and became a single mom (I later married the father, but that’s another story). That’s because I was 30, working, with a Ph.D.

It’s not fair to bring a child into a world of poverty, drug addiction, and violence such as the world my fosters lived in before I fell in love with them and tried to rescue them. I don’t think they would choose to have been brought into that world. They were terrified, like puppies in a puppy mill.

Planned Parenthood, and other counseling services like it, serve a purpose. They are not a convenience for middle class women who choose to terminate pregnancies because they are on a career path. Those people DO have other choices. No, these services are really for the unborn children who are saved from lives of terror, violence and poverty — from being parented by rapists, drug addicts, and people who are downright irresponsible.

The burden on society of gangs, street crime, homeless children, and the other unintended consequences of forcing women to give birth to unwanted children is far higher than Planned Parenthood’s budget.

And for those of you who say, “have the child and put it up for adoption with childless couples desperately wanting a child,” you are even more naive. Most of these unfit parents will not give their children up for adoption until it’s too late. They keep the cute baby and then want to give away the older child who is already scarred and hard to handle.

I wish people would just open their eyes before speaking, and see what is really around them. Or, if they want to be pro-life, they all ought to be made to serve ten years as foster parents.

Related articles

House Votes to Defund Planned Parenthood Over Abortion (usnews.com)
Planned Parenthood debate turns personal – Politico (news.google.com)
House Votes to Stop Funding Planned Parenthood: What This Means for You (self.com)

Feb18

Only Communication Skills Can Save Your Business

Posted on February 18, 2011 by Francine

Only Communication Skills Can Save Your Business

The nightmare scenario of every marketing and investor relations professional is a storm of angry tweets and a single community manager who has to sleep some time. There’s no way that community manager can respond to everyone, and if he/she does, it’s not fast enough in a 24/7 world.

And Egypt showed us how quickly things can escalate if they are ignored.

How to handle the massive interactions with customers that are clearly on the horizon for all companies is a question for Frank Eliason, the pioneer Comcast customer support person on Twitter.

We would have to ask Frank how far and how fast he scaled, because I remember people telling me, ”well, just because he helped you, doesn’t mean he helps everyone. He only helped you because you are influential.”

That was three years ago. Imagine it today.

I’m not influential, but that’s how customers feel who are not supported by social media responses from corporations. They feel like they should be helped, and if the person in front of them, before them, behind them, next to them was helped, they also deserve help.

Yes, all of this is coming. And responsible people in any organization, whether PR people, engineers, customer support people or accounts payable clerks will try to correct the exaggerations, the false accusations, or the mistaken information about the company they work for. They will make their own Twitter accounts and Facebook pages.

Some organizations, the ones where everything has to go through marketing and legal, will never survive the onslaught. Their brands will be damaged like Mubarek’s. Employees in the rank and file will be developing their own Facebook pages for their own departments and business units.

I watched this happen before; when the enterprise was too slow to deploy new collaboration tools, individual business units found web-based solutions outside the firewall and deployed them on their own.

The fact that some companies I know pretty well may not survive the change to social business weighs heavily on me. In fact, the only companies I see (they may not be the only companies, just the only ones I see) that are leading in this are Southwest, Starbucks, and Salesforce.

Southwest has always empowered the gate attendants and flight attendants. Starbucks has empowered the barista. Salesforce is on the front end of social media tools.

The answer isn’t technology. It’s corporate culture change. It’s empowerment. It’s communication. It’s training all employees to write and speak better, and allowing them to do so. It’s choosing the people who work for you based on their communications skills.

Jay and Amber said it in The Now Revolution: you have to choose who you hire, and you have to give those people the opportunity/responsibility to respond. I think we’re going to ask completely different questions when we interview in the future. Those famous Google interview questions for smart engineers? Out the window already, because Google is losing in social.

I taught writing and public speaking many years ago to college students. I teach it every day to startups who have to pitch investors, and have to get those first clients.Now I’m thinking of offering to do it in the enterprise. The only way to deal with this is from the grass roots up, not the top down. And the enterprise is the only place I know where communication is discouraged, rather than encouraged. The entire idea of “only X can speak for the corporation without approval” has to go away. But that means everyone else has to be effective as a communicator.

End of rant

Feb14

Social Business for Enterprise C-Suite Occupants and Board Members

Posted on February 14, 2011 by Francine

Social Business for Enterprise C-Suite Occupants and Board Members

The next business disruption for the enterprise is social business. It is already under way, and most large companies, especially if they’re public, are resisting it mightily.

But every enterprise C-suite occupant and board member should read Jay Baer and Amber Naslund‘s “The Now Revolution” because you have a responsibilirty to help your organization survive. And it won’t survive unless you embrace the changes you fear.

Every customer is a potential reporter, and every employee is a potential spokesperson. Business has changed more in the past three years than in the prior 30. But it’s not a threat, it’s an opportunity. The NOW Revolution shows you how. This book isn’t about how to “do” social media. Instead, it outlines how you can retool your organization to capitalize on real-time business

Egypt’s Revolution and the presence of a Google employee on the ground thanking Facebook should have taught you the importance of real time streams to your brand. You might do well to think of your brand as Egypt. But the difference between your brand and Egypt is that Egypt will toss out Mubarek and go on. Your company may not.

I had an epiphany while listening to Amber and Jay present last week at SMAZ. The epiphany was that many companies are never going to be able to deal with the disruption caused by social business. They simply won’t make it and will go out of business, replaced by companies that do. Or, in my best dreams, by nimble startups.

Here’s a dirty little secret. I also do work for the enterprise. Not as a social media consultant, and not under the Stealthmode brand, which counsels and invests in the game-changing startups of the world.

I work for enterprise companies secretly under a different brand, in which I often ghost write or author white papers, marketing materials, and speeches for those CXOs.

That’s where I get my enterprise knowledge, which tells me I can’t yet consult to those companies about social media, because they are terrified about transparency. They are still on the old path. Not necessarily the rank and file employees, but the decision makers. Everything I write goes through legal. Most things go through the CMO or the CEO or even the CFO. It has to be blessed.

By the time that happens, we are no longer in real time. In fact, we are sometimes months out from the event that occasioned a response. Relatively few companies empower employees to respond to customer complaints without a script.

Amber and Jay are braver than I am. They go right into companies and try to bring them into real time, Amber with Radian6, a leading tool for brand monitoring, and Jay with the combined experience of 20 years as an entrepreneur and digital pioneer ( when I met him he owned the first interactive marketing agency in Arizona).

If you work in a high position for a public company, or are on a board, get this book. But when you read it, don’t forget that you will have to change your entire corporate culture to put the authors’ “seven shifts” into effect. Tranforming an enterprise into a social business involves a philosophical change (decentralization of the marketing/customer support function), a hiring change (finding talent you can trust) , ownership changes (decentralization of response-ability) and new metrics against which to measure success.

So it won’t be easy. But if you don’t do it, you won’t make it for long.

Interview: Jay Baer on The Now Revolution (toprankblog.com)

Feb12

The Internet Free Ride is Over

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Francine

The Internet Free Ride is Over

Image representing FreshBooks as depicted in C...

Image via CrunchBase

No wonder my American Express bill never goes down to zero! I am now paying for Evernote, Freshbooks, Netflix, Audible, Scribe, Page.ly, eFax, iTunes, Carbonite, the Wall Street Journal, TripIt Pro, FlickrPro, and SmugMug. I have already resigned myself to paying for the New York Times when it goes behind the pay wall, and perhaps even for Vanity Fair.

And who knows what health monitoring software I will have to pay for in the future, or which app that I love will decide that it has to go to freemium and kill off the very features I have come to depend on (unless I want to subscribe).

This sucks. I have become dependent on web and mobile apps, largely because they are a wonderful way to discover useful tools, and now I spend hundreds of dollars a month on tools I can’t give up, either because I love them (Netflix) or because they run my business (Freshbooks).

And I’m not alone. An entire generation has grown up thinking information wants to be free (meaning at no cost), and hoping that new business models will be found to make someone else pay for our pleasure or utility. Unfortunately, that same generation has decided it doesn’t want to be interrupted by advertising, either. Much of the software that powers Web 2.0 and gets all the hype has elusive business models. Even Twitter. Even, to some extent, Facebook. If the only way a company can make money is to sell your information, you’re pretty much between a rock and a hard place, aren’t you?

The big takeaway from my trip to AlwaysOn Media in new York last week was that advertising no longer works in these new media, so content can’t be ad supported and we’re moving back toward subscriptions or direct sales. The decade of being rewarded for just being there, being eyeballs, is over.

This will be the year of the fare increase — the year we have to pay to ride the train. What does that mean?

Well, it means we will have to make more thoughtful choices about what we really need. Perhaps I need bookkeeping software, but not note-taking software. I need Netflix more than I need Smugmug. I could buy a hard drive and give up Carbonite. Every month, when we look at our credit card statements, we will form the habit of re-assessing our need for these SaaS apps.

For the companies, it means they will lose customers in significant enough numbers to affect their revenues, their funding prospects, or their exit strategies.

The real bubble in web applications isn’t in the valuations of these companies; it’s really in their inflated customer counts. When people start paying, as they inevitably must after almost a decade of “Fun With Web 2.0,” they will learn to order more carefully. After all, tapas and sushi come in small portions, but they can add up to very expensive meals. If you eat them often, you become aware of that and order accordingly.

It means we have to make choices. Many services are fun to use, but if you had to pay for them, you’d give them up. For the companies, that means more difficulty in generating revenue, or ad dollars, or whatever they plan to use to support themselves.

I usually am the canary in the coal mine about stuff like this, and I feel it coming. Get ready to shell out some shekels or turn off some services.

Feb7

Why Huffpo’s Sale to AOL is Different: A Woman Co-founder

Posted on February 7, 2011 by Francine

Why Huffpo’s Sale to AOL is Different: A Woman Co-founder

<br />Watch live video from Not Really Stealthmode on Justin.tv

For all of you on #Quora who are asking about women co-founders. Dog barking in background is angry that this blogger, still in her bathrobe, hasn't take him to the dog park just yet. But this is important, for women, for Huffpo, and for media.

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode

Feb6

Innovation for Homeland Security

Posted on February 6, 2011 by Francine

Innovation for Homeland Security

Dear Janet Napolitano,

I’m from the entrepreneurship community and I am here to help. We entrepreneurs are trained to see problems as opportunities, and to think of ways we can make money by solving them,often with the help of technology.

You have a problem with airport security. I know this because I fly at least once a month on business. I am always detained, scanned or felt up because in 2006 I had a hip replacement — a dandy piece of titanium that sets off your metal detector every time. By the way, the information about my surgery is widely known: it’s in the online databases of hospitals and insurers, and for good measure I blogged about it. You should know it by now, too.

Since that hip replacement, I have flown about 60 times. Each time, I purposely violate one of the rules for carry-on luggage. Since I am stopped to be wanded anyway, I find this a helpful diversion.

Most of the time, my luggage goes right through on the belt, violations uninspected or undetected, although my liquids, a nail file, even a bottle of water are hidden in it, or I haven’t removed my laptop.

Just this morning, my new MacBook Air went sailing through inside my suitcase undetected.

And yet, the inspection lines at airports are long and the passengers disgruntled, padding around in their socks. Your rules have achieved little, except to prove themselves useless and unenforceable.

Think about it: all the information you ever need about me as a traveler is already in a multitude of databases belonging to the airlines, Medicare, even TripIt. Just looking at Google casually could tell you I’m not dangerous.

And yet you scan and re-scan me endlessly, wasting both of our time and resources.

I see an opportunity here for you, the government, to make some money. How about charging me a fee to issue me a certification, signed also by my physician, that says I have a hip replacement, have already been scanned 120 times, and am a proven safe traveler.

I am a data point. You could scale to real revenue by similarly charging every person who has an implant or a pacemaker.

And we people with bionic body parts are only the low-hanging fruit. There is a much larger market: the corporate traveler. This weary man or woman may fly as often as once or twice a week!

For these folks, create an option to “upgrade to premium,” and charge that to their corporations. Corporations don’t hire terrorists, because they have the money to do proper background checks.

Ask the corporation to pay a flat annual fee per traveler, or have them reimburse their employees the way they reimburse taxi fares and tolls.

Doing this might cost a few TSA feel-up jobs, but it would also increase revenue to the government without raising taxes. Raising taxes causes corporations to re-locate to the Caymans, but charging a “minor” user fee is the way the private sector balances its own budget. (see banking)

You can bootstrap this new venture, Janet, until it gets to market and begins to break even for you and generate revenue. It is the least expensive revenue opportunity I have seen in years of mentoring entrepreneurs.

Oh, and I almost forgot to say that it might also change the world, at least for travelers. And that is what the best innovations do.
(h/t Brad Olman)

Feb4

Advertising, Brands and Media: Welcome to the new New York

Posted on February 4, 2011 by Francine

Advertising, Brands and Media: Welcome to the new New York

I’ve just spent a week concentrating on the New York startup scene. While not as organized (and insular) as the Bay Area bubble I usually live in, it is very vibrant indeed. And there’s definitely money here:-)

You can’t help dealing with the media industry if you are looking at entrepreneurship in New York. Most of the large media buyers, and many of the brands they buy for,are there, as are many of the outlets. And the tension between old and new ways of doing things is palpable. The ad agencies are trying to figure out how to consolidate their traditional power around all the new online media outlets, but the power has definitely shifted within the agencies. The creatives can’t be the gods anymore, because campaigns can be measured. And what old-school Madison Avenue guy knows what creative will appeal to mobile consumers who buy through m-commerce apps that are just beginning to roll out? How do you brand in this new environment? They haven’t a clue yet. No one does.

The media are also struggling. While I was in New York, Rupert Murdoch launched The Daily, a newpaper for the IPad. No one here can figure out how it will make money.
One thing is certain: there’s no magic in display advertising anymore, no matter what medium it is placed in. One company I spoke to told me that most click-throughs are mistaken, and counting them is meaningless as a conversion number.

So what actually constitutes a conversion? Well, remember when Dell first went on Twitter and sold out all it’s outlet merchandise over night? Remember W00t, which sells one item a day and tries to sell it out? Those were/are meaningful conversions. Conversions, increasingly, are direct sales– sales that can be traced back to where the buyer found the offer.

That’s why Groupon is so successful. The merchant who participates in a Groupon campaign can count the number of people who redeem his Groupon. That makes him want to participate again, and also to make him tell the store next door what he did. (they will undoubtedly ask when they see his foot traffic increase)

Groupon doesn’t require heavy-duty creative. It’s Val-pak for the 21st century.

However, there is still an unsolved conundrum. Are the Groupon customers the ones who will be loyal and come back even when you want to make a profit on what you are selling? Are they the RIGHT customers?

Probably not. Those customers are the deal junkies, for whom brands don’t matter. If you are a brand, you don’t want those. They produce too much churn.

Branding DOES require creative, and it takes a long time. And it can’t be measured. So far, the agencies that control the brands’ budgets are directing them into the same old activities, and not into what really can be measured. After all, where are the fees and commissions for Groupon?

I think another disruption. Is coming as both brands and media come to grips with mobile commerce. My Starbucks app and my Checkpoints app are two sides of the same brave new world.

Posted via email from Not Really Stealthmode